Canterton was bending forward over the rose, and remained unaware of her presence till he heard footsteps close to him on the paved path. “Mr. Canterton?” “Yes.” He stood up, and lifted his hat. She was shy of him, and shy of asking for what she had come to ask. Her blue eyes, with their large pupils looked almost black—sensitive eyes that clouded quickly. “I am afraid I am disturbing you.” He liked her from the first moment, because of her voice, a voice that spoke softly in a minor key, and did not seem in a hurry. “No, not a bit.” “I’m Miss Carfax, and I paint a little. I wondered whether you would let me come and make some studies in your gardens.” “Won’t you sit down?” He turned the chair towards her, but she remained standing, her shyness lifting a little under the spell of his tranquil bigness. She became aware suddenly of the rosery. Her eyes swept it, glimmered, and something seemed to rise in her throat. “Nothing but roses!” Canterton found himself studying her profile, with its straight, low forehead, short nose, and sensitive mouth and chin. Her hair was a dense, lustrous black, waved back from the forehead, without hiding the shapeliness of her head. She wore a blouse that was cut low at the throat, so that the whole neck showed, slim but perfect, curving forward very slightly, so that her head was poised like the head of one who was listening. There was something flower-like in her figure, with its lithe fragility clothed in the simple white spathe of her dress. Canterton saw her nostrils quivering. Her throat and bosom seemed to dilate. “How perfect it is!” “Almost at its best just now.” “They make one feel very humble, these flowers. A paint brush seems so superfluous.” For the moment her consciousness had become merged and lost in the colours around her. She spoke to Canterton as though he were some impersonal spirit, the genius of the place, a mind and not a man. “There must be hundreds of roses here.” “Yes, some hundreds.” “And the dark wall of that yew hedge shows up the colours.” Canterton felt a curious piquing of his curiosity. The girl was a new creation to him, and she was strangely familiar, a plant brought from a new country—like and yet unlike something that he already knew. He showed her Guinevere. “How do you like this rose—here?” Her consciousness returned from its voyage of wonder, and became aware of him as a man. “Which one?” “Here. It is the latest thing I have raised.” It was an imaginative whim on his part, but as she bent over the rose he fancied that the flower glowed with a more miraculous fire, and that its radiance spread to the girl’s face. “This is wonderful. The shading is so perfect. You know, it is a most extraordinary mixing and blending of colours.” “That was just the problem. Whether the flower would turn out a mere garish, gaudy thing.” “But it is exquisite.” “I have been sitting here for two whole days watching the bud open.”